People who enjoy tinkering with cars are an inventive lot full of ideas - particularly when it comes to making them go faster.

Sometimes these ideas can be a little crazy. But for a few brief, glorious years in the 1960s there was one man who out-crazyed them all.

The Black Widow was the official Turbonique drag car, fitted with a rocket drag axle that provided 1300hp straight to the rear axle. Picture from www.autofocus.caSource: Supplied

That man was aerospace engineer Gene Middlebrooks and his mail order company Turbonique.

Gene was a man who looked at a problem - any problem - and saw that the solution was rockets. Lots and lots of rockets.

A page from the Turbonique catalogue shows some of the many sensible applications for Turbonique rocket technology. Picture from turbonique.tripod.comSource: Supplied

Turbonique sold three different products but they all came with a single unifying theme. Rockets combined with balls-to-the-wall insanity.

Anyone with a bit of spare cash and a Turbonique catalogue could get themselves an AP supercharger, a rocket drag axle or a microturbo thrust engine.

The AP stood for auxiliary power. Unlike a conventional turbo charger powered by exhaust gases, or a supercharger driven by a belt from the main engine, the AP supercharger was driven by a rocket.

Turbonique - naturally - sold their own brand of rocket fuel called Thermolene which powered all their products including the AP supercharger. Thermolene was actually N-Propyl Nitrate, an extremely volatile fuel which was quite dangerous to be around. It was toxic to inhale and would catch fire if it came into contact with steel or water.

When the AP supercharger was fired up the Thermolene would ignite, spinning a micro-turbine up to insane speeds of around 100,000rpm and ramming air in enormous quantities into the unsuspecting engine that it was attached to. The company determined during dyno testing that their supercharger would roughly double the horsepower of a motor, although they did recommend that it only be run for a maximum of five minutes, and the intrepid user should upgrade pretty much all the moving parts in their engine.

Just attach it to your axle and stand clear - seems safe enough. From the Turbonique catalogue. Picture from www.ausrotary.comSource: Supplied

But why muck around with dangerously overpowering your engine when you could just apply the power straight to the wheels? With a rocket drag axle or two attached to the rear differential of your chosen vehicle that was exactly what happened. It weighed bugger-all and at the flick of a switch would apply anything up to 1300hp - depending on the model - directly to the rear wheels, independently of any power already supplied by the motor.

Rear view of the Tobacco King, an insane street-legal drag car owned by Zach Reynolds. It was a 1963 Ford Galaxie with a 427ci V8 and a quad carb Latham supercharger. It was fitted with a Turbonique rocket drag axle that provided an extra 1000hp directly to the rear axle at the flick of a switch. While primarily a drag car, Reynolds was by all accounts more than happy to light it up in the Tobacco King on the street. Source: SuppliedSource: Supplied

And if that wasn’t enough to get your adrenaline flowing, you could cut out the middle man and go straight to the microturbo thrust engine.

This was just a straight-up rocket which you attached to your vehicle and pointed in the opposite direction to where you wanted to go. Possibly the zenith of Turbonique craziness was attained by bolting a couple of these onto a go kart - something Turbonique was more than happy to sell you. This setup was perfect if you wanted to travel at 260kmh+ in a contraption with all the stability and safety of an office chair.

If you wanted to travel at 260kph+ in a gokart, then a couple of Turbonique rocket thrusters on the back were just the ticket. Picture from vintagekarts.comSource: Supplied

The only downside to any of Gene Middlebrooks’ rocket-based inventions was a tendency to explode unexpectedly. Despite this Turbonique’s products remained legal to buy and use, because the ‘60s rocked.

While a few enterprising car lovers fitted Turbonique rocket accessories to street cars, they were most at home on the dragstrip.

The officially sponsored Turbonique vehicle was a VW Beetle cheerfully called the Black Widow. With an extra 1300hp available at the rear axle, the Black Widow would run a 9.36 second quarter mile. The video at the top of the page shows it racing against Showboat, a quad-engined four-wheel-drive drag car.

Most manufacturers would try and learn from their mistakes if their official drag vehicle became airborne during a run. Turbonique simply used a picture of the crashed car in their advertising. Picture from www.bangshift.comSource: Supplied

Incredibly, making a Bug with 1300hp didn’t end well. During a run it became airborne and crashed catastrophically. While most men would chalk this up to experience and reconsider their designs, Gene Middlebrooks simply used a picture of the destroyed car in his next advertising campaign.

Unfortunately Middlebrooks’ utopian vision of a world in which absolutely everything was rocket powered never became a reality. He was imprisoned for mail fraud because he advertised his parts as ready to use but actually assembly was required. It seems that it was more poor business sense than anything else but it put an end to Turbonique and their rocket-powered mail order empire.

It is unclear what happened to Gene Middlebrooks, or even if he is still alive, but his name will forever be spoken in hushed and reverent tones whenever fans of speed and insane genius gather. What a flaming champion.

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